What does a Daisy mean to you?

What do you think of when you hear the word ‘daisy’? 

My first thoughts are of the little wild daisies that grow in my lawn, followed by the tall, semi-wild Ox-eye Daisies that my father loved to grow on his allotment. Or the Michaelmas Daisies that my mother grew in our garden, to provide some colour in Autumn - but which refuse to thrive for me! And then there’s one of my favourites, the white Marguerite, especially when grown in a pot . . .

Oops-a-Daisy Espresso Mug, White, Yellow, Blue 

As if that weren’t enough, there are actually so many more types of daisy – click HERE to read about five of them – and they come in all sorts of colours too. These are from a photo of a friend's garden that I made into a screenprint years ago:

Customizable April Birthday Card, Red Daisies 

But for my new April Birth Month Flower cards I’ve chosen the little daisies, that we used to make daisy-chains as children. 

I made the motif from a handpainted collage as that seems to add depth and texture to what could otherwise have been quite a bland illustration.

Daisy, April Birthday Card to Personalize by poshandpainterly
 

The symbolic meaning of the Daisy is: innocence, loyal love, hope and purity and they can represent, ‘I’ll never tell’ so can be given to a  friend as a promise to keep a secret.

You can read more interesting facts about daisies HERE.

But when I think of daisies, I think of cheerfulness and sunshine and that's the message they often convey in greeting cards and other situations that call for something akin to a smiley face! Maybe that’s because they open early in the morning and love the full sun upon their faces?

Pretty Mother's Day Card: Daisychains, Polka Dots by poshandpainterly
   

I’ll let you into a secret; when I saw that the Daisy was the Birth Month Flower for this month, I thought it was going to be really hard to come up with ideas for patterns that I would be enthusiastic about. 

How wrong I was! This one unpretentious little flower, nearly always regarded as a weed, soon had the design ideas flowing and flowing . . . and I’ve ended up wanting to carry on and make more!

Pillow or Cushion, Daisy Chains Faux Patchwork by poshandpainterly
 .

Click

HERE

to see my full

Daisy Chain

Collection

When will the Snowdrops appear?

It’s January, and thanks to the mildness of the weather, all sorts of summer flowers, are still bravely trying to brighten the winter dreariness in my little back garden, alongside the Winter Jasmine.




As well as the roses I wrote about last week, there’s the faithful perennial wallflower, Bowles Mauve, that only seems to stop flowering for about a month in early spring. It can get a bit straggly, especially in a garden like mine that has high walls all round so it has to stretch upwards towards the light. But for sheer lasting colour, there's not much to beat it!

There are even a few of the big white Daisies left over from the summer. They look decidedly battered by the gales and sleety rain but it's good to see them even so. 

I read somewhere that their unopened buds can be pickled and eaten as capers – though I don’t recommend trying it without a proper recipe!





My unused path to the garage is covered in fallen apples, ready for the blackbirds who appreciate them when the weather turns really cold, even managing to find them through substantial layers of snow!

I don't know what kind of apples they are as they were planted by the previous owner but they're not particularly nice; so I'm happy to leave most of them for the birds.

Bulbs are beginning to push up through the earth – what energy that must take when the ground is so cold and hard! – a reminder that winter will eventually give way to spring. 

But as yet there are no snowdrops flowering. And that doesn’t surprise me – I always think of snowdrops as a February flower, followed by other bulbs, such as daffodils, from March onwards.

The poets seem to be in agreement that snowdrops put in their appearance in February. Alfred, Lord Tennyson calls them, ‘February Fair-maid’ and here’s another poetic reference, by Hartley Coleridge, that seems to suggest that February is the time when:

‘One month is past, another is begun,

Since merry bells rung out the dying year . . .

. . . The virgin snowdrop like a lambent fire,

Pierces the cold earth with its green-streaked spire.’

Another name for the Snowdrop is ‘Candlemas Bells’, Candlemas being on February 2nd and you can read more about this plucky little flower here. 

Bank of River Monnow, Allt yr Ynys: Poster/Print  
 

You may need to click on this print to see the snowdrops, just tiny flecks of white in the grass, and I know I painted this riverbank landscape from a photo that I took in February. So that settles it, snowdrops bloom in February.

But no, somewhere someone has decided that they bloom in January!

I had a bit of a shock, a couple of Februaries ago, when I started to think about making a ‘snowdrop’ design, based on a screenprint I'd made years ago, for my daughter’s birthday on February 17th. I knew that there were ‘Birth Month Flowers’ – I’d seen the categories on Greeting Card Universe - and assumed that Snowdrops would feature in February. I used the internet to look up the various birth month flowers and to my amazement found that the snowdrop is the flower assigned to January! 

So, if you’re stuck for an original birthday card for someone born in January, this might fit the bill - 

Snowdrops January Birthday Card
 

On the other hand,

 if you are just looking for cards with snowdrops, 

you'll find a whole bunch of them

HERE

Snowdrops February Birthday Card